Scrap Paper Penants

This week, I decided to use up some of my scraps making some wall art for various arty friends. Rather than doing another square collage, I settled on triangular penants. They seemed sort of fun and festive, and as a plus, they could hang right up on the Christmas tree or from a stocking holder over the mantle. No framing required.

Here’s how I made my penants:

I wanted to hang the penants from something sturdy, but I really didn’t want to invest in dowels—my goal was to use up what I had, not buy more. I dug around and found some packs of bamboo skewers leftover from some piano hinge books. Perfect! I started by cutting off the pointy tips with some wire cutters.

I poked the ends of the skewers into a little E6000, and slid a small wooden bead over the glue. This gave the ends a nice finish, and will keep my ribbon hangers from sliding off later.

While the glue was drying, I started working on the penants. First, I needed a simple base to work on. I measured the halfway point on the short edge of a piece of white bristol, and marked it.

I popped a few sheets of bristol into the cutter, with the marked piece on top, and made an angled cut from the end of one short edge to the mid-point of the other. I flipped the pieces over, and made the corresponding cut on the other side. Perfect triangles.

Next, I sorted through my pile of scraps, putting pieces I wanted to use together in piles.

I started at the top of each penant, gluing down one large scrap, and letting it hang over the edge of the triangle a bit. I measured a strip about an inch and a half wide, and folded this over to the back side of the penant. I trimmed the scraps down to the penant shape.

The skewer hangers I made earlier were glued into the fold. This made a nice, stable top edge, and a neat finish on the back side of the penant.

Now, some decorating on the front side. I just cut strips of papers, and glued them in place, trimming the sides even with the penant shape.

I had some images leftover from a project at Ten Two Studios, so I cut around them and glued them onto the penants. I covered the bottom edges with a scrap of ribbon.

The penants seemed to need a bit of dimensional embellishment after all this flat work, so I dug around for ribbon roses, buttons and leaves, and glued them in place with a little Tacky glue.

I cut circles from solid scraps using a punch, and applied stamped letters to them. These were glued onto the penant with a glue stick.

When the penant was finished, I tied a little sheer ribbon to the hanger, letting the tails hang down like streamers. The penants are pretty light, so no gluing or knotting was required.